VMWARE CASE STUDY Comair chooses virtual data centre to help it deliver even more innovative and robust online services CUSTOMER When Southern African airline operator Comair identifi ed Comair Limited the need to improve its online services to keep its edge in the fi ercely competitive airline travel environment, it turned WEB SITE to VMware vCloud Air Network partner RSAWEB to help it www.comair.co.za develop an o site, hosted Virtual Data Centre. Its demands of INDUSTRY this environment included that it host the company’s Disaster Aviation and Travel Recovery and User Acceptance Testing environment, as well as provide Comair with the fl exibility it needs to scale, innovate LOCATION and roll out infrastructure to the business on demand. Johannesburg, South Africa (Head O ce) / Operates Southern African airline operator, Comair Limited was founded in 1946. In 1996 it within southern Africa signed a license agreement with British Airways Plc. to maintain and operate the latter’s local and regional services in Southern Africa. In 2001 it launched South Africa’s fi rst low-fare airline, kulula.com. Apart from low cost fl ights, the kulula brand aims to deliver KEY CHALLENGES an easy, a ordable and complete travel experience for all South Africans through a • Provision infrastructure full service website that allows users to book fl ights as well as arrange car hire, hotel quickly accommodation, book travel packages and more. kulula currently averages 35 000 unique visitors to its website per day and has 10 content uploaders whose fulltime job is • Deploy applications to update website content. e ortlessly • Create a better view of The Challenge solution to fulfi l these needs revealed resources that the core elements necessary to As demand for online airline services support this vision included an o site increased over time, Comair made the SOLUTION environment for the disaster recovery strategic decision to leverage IT as an (DR) site and a user acceptance testing Deploying the RSAWEB enabler for its business. It was the right (UAT) environment that could scale Enterprise Cloud environment decision at the right time; albeit one quickly and give the company the that is built on the VMware that required it to become ever more performance it needed. He added, virtualisation stack, Comair innovative and fl exible in its online “It’s important that Comair o er our now has an o site VDC with a service o erings in order to retain this customers a website experience that is fully operational DR and UAT competitive advantage. Among the out of this world while at the same time resulting new business imperatives environment. providing a cost saving to stakeholders. was the need to be able to provision That is why we began investigating an infrastructure more quickly, have a better o site virtual solution to support this BUSINESS BENEFITS view of its resources, and be able to roll vision.” • Logically isolated private out applications quickly and e ortlessly. environments It was this business landscape that drove its IT department to investigate building The Solution • Full resource visibility an environment that would a) keep pace A rigorous selection process whittled • Boosted performance and with its fast-moving, ever-changing the fi eld down to one viable solution superior functionality business model, and b) a ord it the for Comair. This solution was the fl exibility to scale its services as demand Virtual Data Centre services o ered by arises. VMware vCloud Air Network partner RSAWEB’s Enterprise Cloud solution. Riaan Olivier, IT Operations Manager at Enterprise Cloud is built on the VMware Comair, explained that the search for a virtualisation stack including vSphere, VMWARE CASE STUDY vCenter Server, vCloud Network and modular architecture to help protect it “It’s important that Comair Security (vCNS) and vCloud Director, against any kind of hardware failure. This offer our customers a website and leverages the ability to build Virtual has of course been immensely benefi cial experience that is out of this Data Centres with the help of the VMware to Comair’s IT team. “Our IT Operations world while at the same time vCloud Director. This, coupled with the Team no longer worries about hardware providing a cost saving to fact that the solution allows it to build upgrades or the performance of the VMs stakeholders. That is why we isolated virtual network environments in our business, now they can simply began investigating an offsite through NSX as well as Enterprise Cloud’s focus on delivering virtual infrastructure virtual solution to support this use of the highly fault-tolerant modular for new innovative online projects needed vision.” SolidFire storage, made the decision an by the business,” he explained. easy one for Comair. SolidFire running Through RSAWEB’s Enterprise Cloud, Riaan Olivier, IT Operations Manager at VMware helps protect organisations Comair’s websites and web applications Comair against any kind of hardware failure, with have been able to tap into a multitude of guaranteed sustained IOPS (input/output additional business benefi ts, including per second) ensuring that performance boosted performance and superior and continuity is maintained and functionality, which has led to notable guaranteed. VMWARE FOOTPRINT increases in productivity and e ciency. Leveraging RSAWEB’s Enterprise • VMware vCloud Director As regards to improvements to its online Cloud allows Comair to now enjoy all • VMware vSphere services, Comair now enjoys the benefi t the benefi ts of owning a Virtual Data of being able to distribute the load • VMware vCenter Centre (VDC), without any of the between its owned infrastructure and extensive technical and maintenance • VMware vCloud Network and RSAWEB’s VMware VDC. Security or the capital costs associated with on-premise solutions. This has moreover • VMware NSX ensured that the company’s online Looking Ahead • VMware vCloud Architecture infrastructure is secure, lightning fast and At present Comair’s IT team has 10 Toolkits (vCAT) infi nitely scalable. The most important people making daily use of the Enterprise consideration for Comair however, is the Cloud services and plans to grow the automated disaster recovery provided by environment’s footprint based on the Enterprise Cloud, along with advanced current success it is experiencing. networking and the ability of its internal “Looking ahead, we plan to extend our IT team to lean on RSAWEB’s team of use of the Enterprise Cloud infrastructure Cloud experts for support. “The useful and service all our internal applications features and the disaster recovery as well as external web services in the options, the expert team RSAWEB future,” concluded Olivier. employs and the advanced networking solutions RSAWEB can produce, due to the expert team, has incredible value to us at Comair,” confi rmed Olivier. Business Results & Benefi ts Adopting Enterprise Cloud enabled the various, distributed IT teams that comprise Comair’s IT department to break out of the communication silos that existed previously and to communicate “Our IT Operations Team across functions instead. The Comair no longer worries about VDC moreover delivers full visibility of hardware upgrades or the resources and has allowed IT to gain full performance of the VMs in control of the environment, providing our business, now they can the team with the ability to increase or simply focus on delivering decrease performance requirements of virtual infrastructure for new its online services on demand. innovative online projects needed by the business.” According to Olivier, using vCNS and vApps as part of its platform has also Riaan Olivier, IT Operations Manager at allowed the company to create logically Comair isolated private environments across the business and today provides secure, VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com Copyright © 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: 16Q3 Comair UK.